Other waste

[Killer Cam]

After being burned and processed im left with "other waste" and ash, what do I do with other waste?

[Silent_Shadow]

If you burned mixed waste with "other waste" then it should all be ash. Did you process a mix of ash and other stuff (like metal scrap) after burning mixed waste?

[Sirius Czech]

Other waste should be burned (and is in my map) and reduced to ashes as well. Are you sure it didn´t get there from other source?

[An'Mar]

I had to do a weired setup:

Starting with Toxic waste (imported to be paid for, great early money source)
-> Burned (The mixed Waste Result of that had only Ash,Rubble, Metal and aluminium scrap in it)
-> Sorted (After sorting there where magically 5 % of other trash in the mixed waste)
-> Burned it Again in a second plant Then I got clean ash out of that

At this point we still need a way to deal with large amounts of ash (Other then exporting or very slowly letting it decompose)

[Silent_Shadow]

Separation plants can only extract so much of the waste types inside of a mix (this being the separation efficiency), the rest remains in the mix and gets converted into "other" waste.

You can build extra dumps to multiply the decay rate of ash. Just have a waste truck spreading loads of ash out among them.

[An'Mar]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

You can build extra dumps to multiply the decay rate of ash. Just have a waste truck spreading loads of ash out among them.

Yeah i do that (in fact i have several decomposing stations, aka a several large clusters of ash stockpiles), but still there should be a better way to deal with that than to wait until its all blown by the wind.

Wich brings me to the next point transporting huge amounts of waste is a pain.
Even with mods, loading of any type of waste is so painfully slow (the powered trash claws are a joke)

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by An'Mar:

Yeah i do that (in fact i have several decomposing tation, aka a large cluster of ash stockpiles), but still there should be a better way to deal with that than to wait until its all blown by the wind.

I am not sure there should be a better way, as this puts a pressure on the highly lucrative business of importing waste and burning it. In real life you would need a huge landfill to sustain this business model, so using a bunch of space for dumps in game is pretty on point and gives the industry a downside.

If you don't import trash then the ash generation rate is pretty minimal and you won't need a lot of dumps, especially if you take steps to limit the generation of ash like by not burning fertilizer or treating hazardous waste instead of burning it.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by An'Mar:

Wich brings me to the next point transporting huge amounts of waste is a pain.
Even with mods, loading of any type of waste is so painfully slow (the powered trash claws are a joke)

I recommend handling it with trucks and the waste bins, or via cableway. If you use the small bin stands you can use larger garbage trucks on lines that hold more trash and go faster. You can also sort out construction waste, metal scrap, and aluminum scrap and carry it as aggregates, which can be loaded way faster in the aggregate loading facilities.

[An'Mar]

Getting waste out of cities is not issue.
Handling huge amounts of, Ash (Wich counts as mixed), Toxic and Bio/Compost to get them from A to B Containerstands and trucks are the only fast solution, altough only in smal volume.
Wich completely ignores trains and ships, kinda sad though

Also: i Wasn't aware there where vanilla cablway garbage lorrys

[Sirius Czech]

You can use trains for exporting fertiliser (like I do, as too much biowaste otherwise in 30k pop republic). Ash despersion is easy, as I have a bunch of standard landfills (without claw) near the "second" incinerator (first burns up the hazardous material obviously :D) and a DO that transports the ash from the incinerator between those dumps. Easy job.

BTW this is the only set of ash dumps in my 30+k pop republic, it processes waste from the whole region including a steel mill and two coal mines. Yes, I sort in containers next to industries (mostly construction waste, metal scrap and biowaste) and recently was forced to turn biowaste into fertiliser in composting plant and attach a raildump to it, buy a train and set it to "sell fertiliser at customs", as there was a LOT of waste in general, but since then without an issue and with huge reserves.

I have currently 3 mixed-waste related raildumps (to load waste) with 4 trains assigned in total (metropolis one has two trains on line). There bring mixed waste to my waste processing area, where they unload at another raildump. It wasn´t possible to neetly connect to existing separatino plant, so I built a short cableway with 3 vagons for waste and this transport the waste to the separation plant.

[Sirius Czech]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

If you don't import trash then the ash generation rate is pretty minimal and you won't need a lot of dumps, especially if you take steps to limit the generation of ash like by not burning fertilizer or treating hazardous waste instead of burning it.

Not sure I agree. By treating hazardous waste you just turn it into a mixed waste, right? Or does hazmat treating plant also separate trash (so you are able to get out fertiliser and biowaste)?

Because if not, then there is VERY LITTLE point in building and staffing such expensive factory, if the alternative is to burn them all with minimum costs:
- other waste, biowaste, burnable waste and fertiliser are reduced to ashes, giving separation plant much less material to work through (basically increasing capacity)
- construction waste and metal + aluminum scrap are untouched by flames, so you can separate them later nevertheless
- the only difference is plastic waste. Plastic is reduced to ashes, so no recycled plastic from imported hazmat this way. But are those 0-10% enough to offset an expensive plant and use of chemicals to treat a lot of things that will be burned anyway, while simultaneously increasing the load on separation plant?

[Silent_Shadow]

The difference is the amount of ash generated per burned waste type:

• Half of all hazardous waste becomes ash, whereas less than a fifth of mixed waste becomes ash (depends on the mix).
  
• 70% of fertilizer becomes ash, whereas only 30% of biological waste becomes ash.
  
• 0% of "burnable" waste becomes ash.
  
• Only 20% of both plastic waste and "other" waste becomes ash.

For incinerators, the % listed for a waste type is the amount of that waste type that gets destroyed. The rest becomes ash. Separation plants are similar, but the remainder becomes "other" waste instead.

So basically treating your hazardous waste into mixed waste before burning it reduces the ash generated by 60% at least, and burning extra biological waste before it decays into fertilizer reduces the ash generated by ~57%.

If you can't handle all the construction waste you generate, you can keep mixing it with other waste types and run it through the general separation plant, which will convert 35% of it into "other" waste, which can be burned for an 80% reduction in material.

[Sirius Czech]

I understand, but my problem is not too large amount of ash, my problem is the extra cost of chemicals, for which I get basically nothing in return. If is replace a hazmat treatment with a small incinerator, I can use 1/4 of people and will reduce the load on my separation plant (as it doesn´t need to go through 100% of fertiliser and biowaste, but only through 70%/30% of ashes remaining from it.

Also I really believe that hazmat % are valid only for "true" hazardous part of the material and not for the whole consist, as it would make treating imported hazardous waste even less viable strategy (because it usually consists more or less from fertiliser as well and by burning it immediately you would actually get less ash as an outcome :D).

My main point thus stands - I see no reason NOT to burn hazardous material immediately after obtaining it (be it hospital or import for extra cash). Nothing can separate biowaste and fertiliser out of the mix anyway and you are getting less material (ash) to process further down the (separation) line by doing so while saving manpower and chemicals, only to lose the plastic waste part of the mix in return.

Am I right?

[Sirius Czech]

To add to the argument - biggest choke point of the whole waste system is, imho, the general separation plant, as everything MUST go through it anyway due to construction waste present. So the smaller the load on it, the better.

[Silent_Shadow]

You only get "charged" for the actual amount of hazardous waste in a mix of waste, at a rate of 3 tons of hazardous waste (the component, not the whole mix) per 1.1 tons of chemicals, so if you want to reduce ash generation, you can do so at the cost of some chemicals.

I found that the amount of "hazardous waste" in a mix varied by quite a bit though, so there might be some that are worth purifying for the plastic waste, but probably most are not. In most cases it should only be purified to reduce the ash content and/or the pollution generated.

I wouldn't say that the separator is the main bottleneck because you can presort pretty much everything from industries from the start, which are the main waste generators, and unless you import it, you shouldn't be getting huge amounts of hazardous waste anyway. Keep in mind that you also need to run stuff twice through an incinerator if you choose to incinerate the hazardous waste, separate what remains and incinerate it again.

[Tar-Mairon]

Ash should be usable for construcion industry.